Illegal aliens: The big lie

by Jane Chastain WND

The United States is under siege!

Last week in Los Angeles and other sites across the country, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to protest a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would build a fence along our southern border, enforce our immigration laws and punish employers who hire illegal aliens.

The amazing part of all this was not the size of these crowds, but that not one demonstrator was asked to show proof of citizenship!

Conservatively, some 11 million people are in this country illegally. Many have been here for years with no fear of deportation. Now, they are boldly wagging their fingers at us.

Our immigration laws are a joke. Our leaders are a bad joke.

This week, a handful of Senate Republicans joined John McCain, Ted Kennedy and the Democrats in an effort to pass a watered-down immigration bill that would allow all those who are here illegally to stay and further open the floodgates with a guest-worker provision favored by the president.

This is an insult to those who have stood in line and played by the rules. It is pandering to those who have broken into this country and the employers who profit from hiring the gate crashers.

The big lie is that illegal aliens do the work Americans are unwilling to do. The truth is that illegal aliens will do the work for less, leaving thousands of Americans unemployed and on the public dole.

The reality is you can't do immigration reform without doing welfare reform. The rule for able-bodied citizens should be: You don't eat if you don't work! The rule for immigrants should be: You don't work if you come here legally!

Why should citizens take a 40-hour week job at $7.50 an hour when they can get paid for sitting at home most of the week and doing little or nothing? Yet liberals in Congress have consistently torpedoed efforts to require welfare recipients to spend 40 hours a week in productive activity.

Why should employers offer higher salaries with benefits when they can hire illegal aliens for practically nothing?

Let's be clear about one thing: The hardworking taxpayers are subsidizing these employers because we are picking up the tab for the medical care of their illegal workers. We also subsidize these workers by giving them public assistance through the children they bear while in the country illegally. This is nuts!

You may feel like you are getting a bargain on your lawn care, custodial service, poultry or produce, but you are paying a heavy price.

The Federation of Immigration Reform estimates the direct annual cost of illegal immigration to the taxpayers to be $45 billion per year, with another $10 billion in indirect costs.

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies shows that industries like construction, farming and food preparation are increasingly dominated by immigrant workers. The unemployment rate in those industries hovers around 11 percent, while the employment of illegal immigrants is around 18 percent.

The penalty for breaking into this country is supposed to be deportation. Lawmakers throw up their hands at the enormity of the task of trying to round up those who are here illegally. The truth is all they have to do is look around to begin the process. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that illegals make up more than half of the Washington area's janitorial and landscaper workforce and 43 percent of the region's construction workers are illegally in the United States or have only temporary permits.

The miracle is that a meaningful immigration reform bill ever passed in the House of Representatives. It is a testimony to the hard work of Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado and members of the bipartisan House Immigration Reform Caucus. For years, Tancredo has been like Don Quixote thrashing at windmills, bucking his party and his president in trying to get this done.

This would not have been possible without the calls, letters, e-mails and personal visits of thousands of Americans who have grown weary of meaningless rhetoric from their representatives and demanded action.

Now the Senate is about to thwart that effort.

The question is: Will the good citizens of this country now sit back and give the victory to those who want to defy our immigration laws or will these demonstrations serve to encourage the vast majority of Americans who want our immigration laws enforced?

On Monday, after the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill narrowly passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Kennedy proudly proclaimed, "The country has spoken and today the Senate listened." Kennedy and McCain are listening to the lawbreakers. Who is listening to you?